In this episode of Energy Newsbeat – Conversations in Energy, Stuart Turley is joined by industry experts Charlie Burd from the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia, Kimberly Page from Reese Consulting, and Steve Reese from Reese Energy Consulting.
We had a great discussion about the future of natural gas, energy security, and the role of West Virginia in meeting growing energy demands. The conversation covers the challenges and opportunities of expanding pipeline infrastructure, LNG export potential, and how the state’s thriving natural gas industry plays a key role in the broader energy landscape.
Some of the Key Highlights of the Podcast impacting the U.S. Energy Markets:
- Steve highlights the potential for LNG Exports from West Virginia, which could impact national security and support the Administration’s Energy Dominance programs.
- In another key point, Steve highlights a data center customer in Idaho that is taking advantage of stranded gas, rather than worrying about getting it to a pipeline, and is planning a data center and buying turbines for electrical generation. This follows the new pattern of microgrids and power behind the meter.
- Charlie points out that EQT, with Tobby Rice as the CEO, and Antero Resources, with over a trillion cubic feet in West Virginia, CNX, and HG Energy, are huge assets for the United States. Having leaders at the helm of top United States oil and gas companies makes it easier to achieve the future Energy Dominance plans. As Michael and I have always said, “Good Management, Good Numbers”.
- A shout out to West Virginia University rolling out the first Midstream Engineering Program. This is huge, and they really need some of the course material from Reese Energy Training.
Reese Energy Consulting website:https://reeseenergyconsulting.com/
Connect with Steve Reese on LinkedIn.https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-reese-185a86/
Kimberly Page’s LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberly-page/
Charlie Burd’s LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-burd-67aa9241/
Check out the Gas & Oil Association of West Virginia: https://gowv.com/
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
00:28 – Meet Charlie Burd and the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia
02:08 – West Virginia’s Economic Impact
03:22 – Steve Reese’s Insights on Trends in Natural Gas
05:09 – Natural Gas and Energy Security
06:00 – The Future of Natural Gas in West Virginia
07:32 – Challenges in Pipeline Permitting
08:17 – The Grid and Energy Demands
10:00 – Behind-the-Meter Power Generation
12:12 – The Push for LNG Exports
14:56 – Energy Dominance and Global Trade
16:08 – Toby Rice and Industry Leadership
17:00 – Economic Growth in the Marcellus and Utica Shales
19:03 – Bitcoin Mining and Stranded Gas
21:51 – Upcoming Summer Meeting
23:57 – Collaboration and Competition in the Energy Sector
25:03 – Political Advocacy for Natural Gas
27:23 – Steve’s Upcoming Energy Auditing Program
29:02 – Midstream Engineering Program at West Virginia University
30:01 – Closing Remarks
Full Transcript:
Stuart Turley [00:00:07] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat podcast. My name is Stu Turley, President of the Sandstone Group. We’ve got an all star cast and we’re here to talk about natural gas and a whole bunch of great things coming around the corner. I’ve got an all-star cast. First around the corners is Kimberly Page with Reese Consulting. How are you today?
Kimberly Page [00:00:26] I’m doing awesome. Thank you.
Stuart Turley [00:00:28] Oh, and next round of corner, we’ve got Charlie Burd. Charlie is the president over there at the Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia. And I am honored to have you on the show, sir.
Charlie Burd [00:00:39] Thanks, Stu. It’s a pleasure to be here with you this morning.
Stuart Turley [00:00:42] And then we have the Steve Reese, not just a Steve Reese, but I mean the Steve Reese he is the president and CEO over there at Reese Energy Consulting. And one of our all time great sponsors. How are you this morning, Steve?
Steve Reese [00:00:57] I’m doing fine. And it is the because if there was more than one of me and my wife would be in big trouble. Just just ask Kimberly.
Kimberly Page [00:01:06] I know, I’ve got the truth.
Stuart Turley [00:01:07] All right. Well, I’ll tell you what, Charlie, once you kick us off and tell us a little bit about your organization and what you guys do, because that really ties into our natural gas discussion today.
Charlie Burd [00:01:19] Thanks, Stu. It’s a pleasure to do that. The Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia is about a 475 member trade association of oil and gas producers, interstate pipelines, midstream operations, and all the companies that provide services to those basic big industries, not only here, but in other parts of the country. We have members from all of the United States. Formed in late 2020, became the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia on January 1st of 2021, and that had been with a merger from the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia and the West Virginia Natural Gas Association. So that merger was a great merger of producers and pipelines and we are very pleased to now have one voice in the state of West, Virginia to serve the needs of our industry and to the constituents of our state.
Stuart Turley [00:02:08] I’ll tell you what, Mike Rowe needs to get on this next podcast because you supported on your website, 73,120 total jobs. I’m sure that’s an old number and we’ve got a lot of jobs that you guys are supporting.
Charlie Burd [00:02:23] Yes, we are a tremendous economic driver here in the state of West Virginia. $1.5 billion in payroll, average salary of over $100,000. And we continue to grow. Our rate count has stayed steady and our production is climbing. We achieved over 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2024. And when you take West Virginia and combine it with the state of Ohio and the state of Pennsylvania, if we were an entity to ourself. We would be the third largest producer of natural gas in the world, second only to the United States as a country and Russia. And we’re very proud of that. We’re in the heart of the Marcellus, and we are just going gangbusters here. And it would be helpful if we had a little bit more pipeline capacity takeaway, but we’re working on that also.
Stuart Turley [00:03:12] Well, Steve, this is a molecule discussion about how the change is really coming around a corner and your expertise, you’re seeing trends on natural gas, aren’t you?
Steve Reese [00:03:22] Yeah. You know, as you know, Stu, we’re, we do a lot for independent producers. And number one, that’s why we’re excited to finally get engaged with Charlie and his group because we have done a lot of work in his backyard with, for people like Chesapeake and Southwestern Energy and now some independents, but as you know, our group also dabble some in the AI data center world, and we have also an office in Berlin on our LNG project. And so. There’s no doubt that a state like West Virginia is key to energy security so much. And I do also believe on the LNG side that there are some things going on with respect to a potential liquefaction ports in Virginia to where it would exacerbate West Virginia’s economy extremely if we can begin to export LNG from the East Coast instead of Houston or Louisiana. So the gas that the game is changing, this is my 45th or 46th year in it. And, you know, I’ve seen a lot of cycles, but I’m, I’m very bullish right now. And it is still though, driven by the independent producer. And all you have to do is look at our website, look at our customers and that’s, that’s what has fed my family for all these years. And so I’m so excited for Kimberly to spend some time with Charlie and his folks here in a couple of weeks, because it’s still fertile ground. Everybody talks about the Permian and the DJ and the Botkin and all this, but the more and more that we’re out in Charlie’s neck of the woods, whether it’s the deep horizontal Marcellus giant wells or the vertical, you know, legacy tuck wells, he’s got some operators that really, really know what they’re doing.
Stuart Turley [00:05:09] That to me is just amazing. And Kimberly, we were just talking a little bit about what some of your discussions were on some of the EMP operators up there. I’m noticing that the West Virginia is still 87% electrical generation is coal. And thank goodness that we’ve got a administration that is supporting that. But the amount of growth that you’re seeing up there, Kimberly, in the pipelines and your EMP at great EMP operators up there. Steve just brought up a huge point. That is exporting out of that area and those export facilities up there? What are you seeing up there?
Kimberly Page [00:05:45] Steve actually took the words out of my mouth. We talked about that in the sense of what the potential is for West Virginia. And so us getting a bigger footprint there is the ultimate goal. And it’s because of stuff like that, stuff that in future we see as very.
Stuart Turley [00:06:00] Charlie, what are some of the things that your members, what are the hot buttons that your members are saying right now? Well, I’ll tell you, we have a
Charlie Burd [00:06:06] very diverse membership and from a producer perspective, obviously the change of leadership in Washington DC has benefited this industry to regions kind of unknown and really remarkable in a sense because this new administration is very bullish on natural gas production, on energy, on energy security for our country and boy, we are all about that. So for us, it’s a process of continuing to drill, Continuing. To provide natural gas, mostly most of what we we produce in West Virginia is shipped out of state because we’re a small state and the it serves other markets where there is a vast thirst for energy of the east coast and to the south. So this new administration, we’re certainly anxious to see if they can orchestrate pipe expedited pipeline permitting. Oh, yeah, that would be That would be very- very good for us. And also, you know, electrons is gonna be the new currency of economic development in this country. Those areas that have electrons will get the projects so that you cannot underscore boldly enough that the key to success here will be power production, natural gas power production and being able to provide electrons. To all the AI and data centers and such as will be developed in the next few years in the United States.
Stuart Turley [00:07:33] Well, Charlie, you got some big points in there. And I’ll tell you, our great secretary of energy, Chris Wright is one cool cat. And when they put out a report, Steve, they put a report. I believe it was last week. And in that report, they basically said, here’s our problems. Oh, by the way, we know there’s a problem with the grid coming around the corner. They have 22 gigawatts of nuclear and natural gas ready to go. They have another 180 gigawatts of wind and solar that are may or may not even happening, but they need all 200 gigawattes coming online for AI. They got a really big problem. And I think we got the right man to try to figure this out.
Steve Reese [00:08:17] Let me interject something here, but I think Charlie may be getting ready to see her has seen some, but is a lot of behind the meter power generation. And I’ll tell you an interesting story. We have a new client in Idaho, of all places, that we’re leasing 30,000 acres up there. It’s going to be dry gas production. Williams is about six miles away and our goal is to not and tie our gas into the pipeline. Our goal is we’re going to buy the turbines, generate our own electricity and have our own data center and literally have an in-house power generation based upon natural gas with maybe some solar backup. And I have a running bet with a friend of mine that I think that within the next two years, Microsoft will be filing drilling permits somewhere. It’s just amazing, because the grid is done. I mean, if you look at just the AI potential demand, and I think these may be some astute numbers, but in five years, our electricity demand could double. Well, if we didn’t have alternative ways of behind the meter and doing it with natural gas or nuclear, I mean our lights would be dark all the time. So people are thinking out of the box, export is gonna be the big deal. And just driving our computers and technology. The data centers aren’t just about AI, they’re about what we’re doing right now. They’re about technology and your phones and the exacerbation of things that we use in our everyday lives. And I just have always felt like natural gas is maybe the answer to those situations.
Stuart Turley [00:10:01] Well, Kim, do you got anything on that?
Kimberly Page [00:10:03] I do not. I should not have talked to him before this show today because he’s pretty much telling the story that we discussed. So I’m going to leave it at that.
Stuart Turley [00:10:14] Cool. You’re going to be up in there and you’re going to be visiting with some new, you’ve got a bunch of projects and new customers rolling around up in there. And the EMP operators, there’s a President Trump’s, I want to make sure that we all understand drill baby drill was a great. Campaign slogan, and drill baby drill is not going to happen based off of a president’s mandate. Drill baby drill happens under market conditions, and I think the market conditions are going to swing back around, and we actually are going be making money because ESG has really had a profound impact on oil and gas producers. They’ve been giving money back to their investors. They’re one of the best places to give money back. Midstream operators giving money back to their their folks. And so, Charlie, how do we get pipelines from the great Marcellus of your product out? Lee Zeldin has got to get the regulatory hurdles out of the way.
Charlie Burd [00:11:21] Well, yes, and West Virginia, particularly the amount of natural gas we produce that just over exceeds any capacity we can use here inside the state of West Virginia. So all of our pipelines are basically interstate and in nature. So being able to get across the state lines in an expedited manner will be key to West Virginia staying relevant in this game. And, and, and we will, I’m just. Convinced of it. We agree, Secretary Wright, he really has the big picture, as does Secretary Burgum over at the Department of the Interior. They really do understand Secretary Burgum being the governor of the state of North Dakota, where they had the Bakken and all the opportunity there. He understands energy and so does Chris Wright.
Stuart Turley [00:12:12] I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen such a, a triple horseman or the three horsemen of energy in these guys. Never, never seen that you’re going to say something.
Steve Reese [00:12:22] Stu, one key thing you just said that makes me really admire, let’s just call the West Virginia producers, is Charlie and his guys didn’t experience a lot of the private equity craziness that went on over here and in the Permian during the 2013 to 2020 or so just boom of drilling these crazy shale wells that really didn’t have the economics. And so. Obviously, as we know, what happened was everyone had to pivot and say, we’re going to quit drilling willy-nilly. We’re going start returning money back to our shareholders, but that’s what they’ve been doing in West Virginia and Toby and people up there all along because they didn’t have a lot of this funny money, you know, 30% cost of capital, private equity money, you know run by a bunch of, excuse me, 20 year olds that were accountants. And so. Once we started doing some stuff in West Virginia about three or four years ago, I began to get excited because it’s the ones you’re dealing with out there were prudent. I mean, we’ve we’ve audited even the big Majorsville facilities and all of those. And we’re excited now to kind of jump in with both feet and start spending some time there. And it sounds like it seems like I think we’ll confirm that the folks in that part of the country do things the right way.
Stuart Turley [00:13:47] That’s pretty cool. I tell you, I got really intrigued by your statement, Charlie, on the exports and getting the pipelines to market. If we are going to achieve energy dominance with Chris Wright and President Trump being able to say, we have to be energy dominant, well, President Trump has been right about the tariffs. I just wrote a nice article on that. Everybody was saying, oh, the tariffs are going to bring the country down. Well, how do you explain this hundred billion dollars that shows up on our doorstep? You know, now we’re sitting here going, maybe we can get rid of the IRS and get rid of The Fed and we got some really cool things that may happen. But when you sit back and take a look at energy dominance, those pipelines from West Virginia out so that we can make those to an LNG export facility, like Steve just mentioned, holy smoke. Going that way and then if we get Alaska’s online going the other way into Asia, we just signed the trade deal with Japan and they were all in on the money coming in. I did not have all this money coming into my bingo card this year. I did. I mean, that’s a lot of investment dollars. It’s too, I’ll just, I just say.
Charlie Burd [00:14:56] This. I guess I’ve always been a fan of how President Trump is always thinking three steps ahead of where he’s talking. And I mean that when he makes a statement, okay, that’s statement A, but he’s already thinking statement B, C, D, E, and F, because his mind, I believe works that way. I’ve never met him. I would love to. But when you look at West Virginia, we have EQ’d largest producer of natural gas. In the country. We have Antero Resources, largest producer over a trillion cubic feet in West Virginia. We had Expand Energy, which is a southwestern Chesapeake merger. And then, and then you add on North, Northeast natural, you add in arsenal resources, HG energy, CNX. I mean, I’m, I know I’m going to forget somebody. I’m gonna punch myself on the side of the head when we’re done. But these, these are the best of the best producers. And I’ll tell you, when, when Toby Rice walks into a room and speaks on the industry, a hush comes over the room. He really understands what he’s talking about. And one of his big but the things that he advocates for is is LNG and
Stuart Turley [00:16:08] Let’s get him and you on a podcast together because now Nick over at CNX is phenomenal. I have thoroughly enjoyed my podcast with Nick and that went bonkers. That man is truly not only a industry leader, he’s a true thought leader and his book was phenomenal. So I truly loved Nick over there as a CEO. You got great people
Charlie Burd [00:16:33] CNX and Tero, they’re all innovators in what they do. They’ve had to be. And when we look at the state of West Virginia and how they allocate monies on projects for economic development, guys, oil and gas guys don’t ask for money. They do this with funds generated internally. There’s no handout from government to do what we do. And I think that really sets us aside from others.
Stuart Turley [00:17:00] You know, Charlie, that’s a brilliant point. I’ve also noticed the amount of subsidies to wind farms that was in the big, beautiful bill to wind and solar. We’ve now had $40 billion worth of wind and solar canceled. It’s like, holy smokes that you were about to say something, Steve, before I cut you off.
Steve Reese [00:17:19] No, I’m saying that the renewables thing, you know, you know, me, I will tease and kind of debate some of those guys from time to time and the public square, but you know there are places for them that they work and can be amenable. But you know what happened? The public said we’re done being these things forced down our throats, just like Germany and Charlie is the Stu knows we have a German entity that we are fundraising on that Toby has been involved somewhat in and we’re going to own our own liquefaction. We’ve signed in-user agreements in Germany and Poland already because they got wind stuffed down their throat for five years and their electricity price has tripled. And I think people here are going, we’ve spent billions and trillions of dollars on all of these renewables and nothing has changed. Fossil fuels still drive 82% of the demand in the world. It went from 83 to 82, and we’ve spent trillions of dollars. So, but back to our point, West Virginia is definitely a key. And when we first went up there and doing some work for Southwestern, I was amazed at the volume metrics of some of these Marcellus wells. They make us in the mid-continent look like that, you know, we’re like on the A team, so kudos to those guys. They do a great job.
Stuart Turley [00:18:41] Is there a lot of Bitcoin mining coming off of a lot of stranded wells till they get a pipeline there, Charlie? Is that something that the EMP operators are able to do is stick a natural gas, their own generator there on a well and then do Bitcoin mining and that kind of thing? I was just asking because I do not know that market. Stu, I’m gonna be honest with you.
Charlie Burd [00:19:03] I can tell you, I don’t track that probably as closely as I should. I have other things that I do, but my sense is no, there’s not a tremendous amount of Bitcoin operation here. I remember the first time I really kind of got into that, I got a call from a company that says, you know, we’d like to have some of your associated, we’d to associate a gas. I’m going, associate a, well, you know we don’t have so much associated gas like they do where they- They’re off down sold. Yeah, we put it in a pipe and we sell it because we only produce about 14 million barrels of oil. So it’s not like we flare gas to get to the oil. We are a natural gas producing state, well more than oil. So Bitcoin, I am not your expert on that at all, but stranded production and that sort of thing, no, not too much because what’s odd is of our 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas we produce, about 95% of that comes from 5,700 horizontal wells. That directly goes back to Stu’s point about how prolific these wells are. The 3.5 trillion, 96% of that from 5,700 wells and the other 58,000 wells produced the other five or 6%. That’s wild.
Kimberly Page [00:20:12] I was just going to say, Charlie, back to you mentioning Toby and some of the huge companies that you have there. I noticed that on the speaker list for the upcoming meeting, you’ve got quite the lineup this year.
Charlie Burd [00:20:25] Well, we try every year. We try to really mix a little bit of political or political type things in with our keynote speakers. And certainly, we’ve done that again this year. We are very excited about our upcoming summer meeting. We have Fidelis New Energy coming in. They just cited or has announced a new data center project in West Virginia. And they’re the first of what is expected to be many. And we have. We just have, we have a great lineup of speakers go online to go wv.com. And you’d be able to see that there’s not too late to come to our meeting. You would really enjoy the venue and, and the, and the speaker lineup that we have. And I don’t have them all in front of me. So pardon, pardon me for my forgetfulness, but certainly the governor Fidelis new energy, our attorney general, JB McCusky, who has been a leader in his ability to. To coordinate with other AGs around the country to fight off these atrocious kind of things that are going on that would put an end to natural gas or to fossil fuel energy. And we just, we just can’t have that. And so we have, we have great leaders coming and we’re excited, 350 or 400 attendees at the beautiful Greenbrier, which is a five-star resort here in West Virginia. It’s kind of a real jewel in the rough, but we are, we’re looking forward to our meeting August 3rd through 5th.
Stuart Turley [00:21:51] You’ve got a nice list. I’m sitting here looking at your list. That’s a heck of a list. You got it.
Charlie Burd [00:21:55] That was my point it really
Kimberly Page [00:21:57] He’s being a bit humble.
Charlie Burd [00:21:59] Well, I will be honest, I have a great meeting planner and administrative services in our organization. She handles all of that and she never stops. What I do is I’ve learned over my 23 years with her, just stay out of the way and let her take care of it.
Kimberly Page [00:22:15] Thank you very much.
Charlie Burd [00:22:16] She’ll make us all look good, but Lori Miller-Smith is a key to our summer media success, our media success.
Steve Reese [00:22:22] I understand that and the reason Kimberly has a big smile is she just realized she’s going to go spin and get paid to go hang out at the Greenbrier for two.
Charlie Burd [00:22:31] Stu, Stu, somebody has to do it and it might as well be Kim.
Kimberly Page [00:22:35] And I promise I am very, very excited about it. And one of the people in the lineup was Toby, and you had just mentioned him quite a bit, of course. And I’m interested to hear his input during that time.
Stuart Turley [00:22:47] You know, you said when, when Toby speaks, people listen, it’s the same way with Chris secretary, Chris, right? When he speaks, I’m over there taking notes. Cause the man never stops. Neither does Toby, right. Neither does Nick neither do all your great companies up there. You, you got a who’s who going along on here. That’s.
Charlie Burd [00:23:09] Oh, there’s no question we have we have some of the finest producer operators in the country working right here in the Marcellus and Utica shales here in West Virginia and also in southwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio. We’re all just kind of one big happy group and we all get along we share we share information we We share meetings, we jointly collaborate to host meetings, and the idea that there’s competition between the states is really not true. I don’t know if the producers compete, I don’t think so, maybe for leaseholds, but from an association standpoint, no, we’re tied very closely with the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the Pennsylvania Independence, the Ohio Oil and Gas Group, and even the Kentucky Oil and Gas Association. We’re very much worked together in all those regards.
Steve Reese [00:23:58] Well, I’ll tell you what, if I said that about Oklahoma, Texas, I would be lying.
Kimberly Page [00:24:03] Here it goes
Charlie Burd [00:24:04] The last time we did a horns down, we got a 15 yard penalty, but still won the game.
Steve Reese [00:24:09] I knew I liked Charlie for some reason. I don’t know what it was.
Charlie Burd [00:24:13] No, you know, the other part of our meeting that we’re going to be pretty excited about is we have Congresswoman Carol Miller coming and she has been a real advocate for us over in Washington, D.C., as has our two senators, Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice. And while Senator Justice plans to be there, the Capito family is there on a kind of a sabbatical, maybe a family vacation. So Shelley won’t be able to be their nor will Riley Moore be able be there either. So they’re related of course, but I think both will provide a video message for our meeting. And we’re looking forward to that. We’re hoping maybe getting some conflicts now with some of our speakers and there may be a little shuffling in them, but there always is, but we weather that storm every year. And our governor will be there. Governor Morrissey will be and he is a huge advocate for natural gas in the state.
Stuart Turley [00:25:04] Well, that’s great. Hey, as we go around the horn here for last thoughts, I’ll tell you what, Charlie, how do people find you? Find us online.
Charlie Burd [00:25:10] You just go to google go wv.com and there’s our website and it is just chock full of all the things we do. Our meetings, our issues, our news releases. Your summer event. Summer event is there. You don’t want to miss a summer meeting, but you know we have two other events too. We have a beautiful winter meeting that’s always held in that January, February time frame that coincides with our legislative session, which is generally mid-January, mid-March. So we have wonderful meetings. We’re very safety minded. We have, we do lots of safety seminars and we do those in conjunction with our West Virginia public service commission and our pipeline affiliates. And we’re very excited about that. And then we do a tax seminar every year. So we try to keep our members informed in a dozen different ways. I was on the phone earlier this morning on some environmental issues with stormwater construction. And so I have no two days that are the same. And so that’s what makes my job so much fun. You know, they say you don’t work when you love what you do. So I’ve never really worked. I love every day of what I do for the association and for the industry.
Stuart Turley [00:26:18] How cool is that? All right, Steve, what do you got going on?
Steve Reese [00:26:21] Well, you know, we’ve, we’re doing well. The good Lord has continued to bless our companies and we’re getting ready to, I’ll want to do another show with you soon. We’ve, getting ready, to roll out a new program. You know, we do a lot of midstream auditing of, you know, pipeline and midstream operators. And that’s why we spend a lot of time in Charlie’s neighborhood. But we’re gettin’ ready to do auditing, energy auditing in total, a real estate, large buildings, anybody that has a light switch that we’re going to get in the electric side along with the gas side. So we’re getting ready to kind of roll that out with the press release and some other things, but we’re excited that the gas business is back where it should be as you know, I’ve always said it’s affordable and us made ubiquitous and, and it’s just a great product. And so my staff has continued to carry the ball during, I have had, you know, as you had some health problems, but I’m doing fine. And so we’re just anxious really today to hook up with Charlie and and to kind of see if we can expand our footprint in West Virginia.
Stuart Turley [00:27:23] Sounds great. And Kimberly, what do you got going on?
Kimberly Page [00:27:26] Nothing just, you know, painting my nails over here. No, I’m kidding. Super. I’m like, Charlie, it doesn’t feel like a job. It almost feels like a family. I love getting into anything Steve throws over my way. I’m excited to break ground, additional ground in West Virginia and to be at the meeting next week and meet a lot of the people for the first time for me. So. We’re happy to be new members of the organization. I think the other thing is just as Steve said, he’s constantly looking and trying to figure out some of our next moves, being very strategic about what we’re doing and letting me be a part of all of that is a blessing. I’m a happy camper.
Stuart Turley [00:28:10] That is pretty cool.
Charlie Burd [00:28:10] Stu man I have one man make one more comment Absolutely. Steve generated the thought that I can’t let slip by because while they’re in state or when they come back to the state, we want them to meet with WVU. West Virginia University has rolled out the absolute first midstream engineering program in the country. So we have an engineering program through our West Virginia University’s petroleum and natural gas engineering department. Yeah, Dr. Sam and Mary is heading that up. So we have the first midstream engineering program. And I would say to Kimberly, I believe Sam will be at our meeting. And the one thing I wanna do is make sure that we get Kimberly in front of Sam. And make that introduction with the university so that they can coordinate activities. And I’m sure that Steve and Kimberly will be able to assist Sam and Sam will be to assist them.
Steve Reese [00:29:03] Charlie may not know, you know, we have a training company, we have courses on midstream and natural gas I’ve taught off and off for 30 years and and they’re online, we’re getting ready to have a new partner there. And I appreciate that Charlie, that’s that’s a great catch.
Charlie Burd [00:29:17] You must get introduced to SAM and West Virginia University’s engineering program.
Kimberly Page [00:29:23] To show me Sam, you’ll know what I’m talking about
Charlie Burd [00:29:26] I’ll take care of it.
Stuart Turley [00:29:28] You know, I got to teach or not teach, but I did a podcast over at OU with the director of their energy department at O.U. And O. U. Has a top notch energy department. So it’s cool that West Virginia is trying to get better than OU in their energy department by getting a pipeline midstream in there. I had to defend you, Steve. I have to defend your honor, right? Well, you didn’t get better?
Steve Reese [00:29:52] I was there in the seventies and I have deleted all those pictures. There is a little bit of beer left in town, but not lot.
Stuart Turley [00:30:01] How fun. All right. With that, please like, subscribe and share. And we will have all of Charlie’s content and links in the show notes. We’ll have Steve and Kimberly for Stu Turley, President and CEOof the Sandstone Group. This is the energy news beat podcast. Have a great day.
